Installing Arcade Learning Environment with Python3 on MacOSX 10

In this tutorial, we install the Python interface for the Arcade Learning Environment (ALE), which in short, allows us to create AI agents for Atari 2600 games.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you will need:

MacOSX 10 (El Capitan)
a sudo, non-root user

Note that this may work on older operating systems but not guaranteed.

Step 1 - Installing Dependencies

Install Homebrew if you have not already.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Use Homebrew to install several libraries required for low level access to media and controls.

sdl: designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware
sdl_image: image file loading library
sdl_mixer: sample multi-channel audio mixer library
sdl_ttf: allows you to use TrueType fonts in your SDL applications
portmidi: real-time MIDI input/output

brew install sdl sdl_image sdl_mixer sdl_ttf portmidi

If you do not have Python 3 installed, you have 2 options, where the first is recommended:

Install Anaconda3 from source.
Install via Homebrew using brew install python3.

To ensure that these packages have installed successfully, list all packages and ensure that the five packages above are all included.

brew list

We now install our Python dependency, PyGame.

pip install hg+http://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame

Step 2 - Installing Arcade Learning Environment

We will work in our user directory.

cd ~

Clone the source code from Github.

git clone https://github.com/mgbellemare/Arcade-Learning-Environment.git

Navigate into the newly-created directory.

cd ~/Arcade-Learning-Environment

Create a directory to house our build, and navigate into it.

mkdir build && cd build

Use cmake to build our makefile.

cmake -DUSE_SDL=ON -DUSE_RLGLUE=OFF -DBUILD_EXAMPLES=ON ..

Finally, launch the build.

make -j 4

Step 3 - Installing the Python Interface

We can install the Python module locally. Navigate to the repository root.

cd ~/Arcade-Learning-Environment

Install the Python module, with the provided setup.py.

pip install .

Step 4 - Running an Agent in Python

Before proceeding, download ROM files for the Atari games. A ROM file contains copy of data from a read-only memory chip which in this case, comes from an arcade game.

Optional: To see a list of supported games, run ls src/games/supported from the repository root.

Navigate to your user home directory.

cd ~

Create a demo Python file demo.py, using nano or your favorite text editor.

nano demo.py

Copy and paste the following inside your file.

"""
Sample script for the Arcade Learning Environment's Python interface

Usage:
    demo.py <rom_file> [options]

Options:
    --iters=N    Number of iterations to run [default: 5]
    --display    Display the game being played. Uses SDL.

@author: Alvin Wan
@site: alvinwan.com
"""

import docopt
import random
import pygame
import sys

from ale_python_interface import ALEInterface


def main():
    arguments = docopt.docopt(__doc__, version='ALE Demo Version 1.0')

    pygame.init()

    ale = ALEInterface()
    ale.setInt(b'random_seed', 123)
    ale.setBool(b'display_screen', True)
    ale.loadROM(str.encode(arguments['<rom_file>']))

    legal_actions = ale.getLegalActionSet()

    rewards, num_episodes = [], int(arguments['--iters'] or 5)
    for episode in range(num_episodes):
        total_reward = 0
        while not ale.game_over():
            total_reward += ale.act(random.choice(legal_actions))
        print('Episode %d reward %d.' % (episode, total_reward))
        rewards.append(total_reward)
        ale.reset_game()

    average = sum(rewards)/len(rewards)
    print('Average for %d episodes: %d' % (num_episodes, average))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Copy the configuration file to the directory that contains your Python file.

cp ~/Arcade-Learning-Environment/ale.cfg .

Finally, run the program, using the path to your downloaded ROM file.

Note: As of the time of this writing (Dec. 2016), the ROM filename must contain only lowercase letters. Otherwise, ALE will hang.

python demo.py <rom_file>

Optionally, watch the game being played using the --display flag and/or change the number of iterations by setting the --iters=N flag. For example, to turn on the display and play 10 games, use the following

python demo.py <rom_file> --display --iters=10

The Arcade Learning Environment is now ready to use.

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Alvin Wan